I thought Cedric was gonna be good at Volleyball. That's why I picked him for my team. He was blonde, freakishly tall, and had these dark lenses on that I thought looked somewhat sporty. I turned out to be wrong, because he kept missing serves back-to-back. In an attempt to encourage the rag tag volleyball team of rowers I was captain of, I kept throwing up encouragements to this unknown, slightly scary figure. "Go CJ. Okay CJ. You got this CJ." That's when you looked down at me (I think you made eye contact but I'm not sure because of the blinding sun) and said, "My name is not CJ." It was super awkward... Anyways, we keep losing- I am predictably horrible at volleyball, specifically atrocious at serving. In the same tone of trying-to-pretend-this-matters, CJ (Cedric), picked up a familiar tune. "Let's go Annie!" It was like two stars, crossing paths in the most mildly irritating way. I turned, looked up into his dark lenses, and said "My name is NOT Annie." We lost the game.

The weekend before the end-of-year rowing party I had gone to this volleyball game, where I met a girl who I didn't totally know the name of. The realities of finals were setting in, and I was preparing for the reckoning. The party was a toga party, and I had no clue how to tie a toga or where to get one. I learned through online research that people typically use bedsheets. Given my height, I needed at least a queen-sized bedsheet but only had a twin xl bed. Rather than buy bed sheets I wouldn't be able to use, I decided to buy a piece of cloth I wouldn't be able to use and took the hour and a half long bus ride to Jo-Ann Fabrics. My internet resource told me I needed accessories, so I purchased a gold rope. Hours later I donned my robe, leaving the gold rope at home seeing as it was kind of corny. At the party, I had a great time, meeting all the crew people in a more casual setting and stayed for a long while. As the night wrapped up, I spotted the volleyball girl on a chair shlumped in a corner of the noisy living room. I smoothly came over and asked her to tell me her name again, she said "It's Ahni." "Oh, where does that name come from?" I asked. She said, "It's an Armenian name."I then demonstrated my deep understanding of world history by saying, “Man, screw Turkey.” “Agreed,” she said, laughing. After some more chatting, we exchanged contacts before Ahni was whisked away to help a friend who was puking in the alley. After I got back, I updated her name in my phone to Annie, sent her a screen shot, and she didn't respond for three hours. Later that night, she responded, "lol CJ, that's messed up."

Like most things in life between us, Cedric had to take the first step to action. We had talked about marriage here and there for the past two years, which normally ended with me rambling on about, “I don’t know if I’d even want a ring… (I did),” or “Should we??? I don’t know. Sounds stressful to coordinate… (it is),” as Cedric listened patiently. So, I had absolutely zero idea what was going on when I walked into our apartment and found a cat in a tuxedo (no, like a cat wearing a tuxedo, not a tuxedo cat) staring at me from the end of the hall. I had had kind of an irritating workday, cutting maple branches to be gnawed by a family of hungry beavers before suiting up to remove a 12 ft purple martin gourd tree from a field of 10-inch mud. The one bright spot was shellfish-crew offering me a bag of freshly harvested geoduck, stating that it makes for good chowder. I hesitated but was allured by the suspicious looking trash bag, slightly wet from some unseen prick in the plastic. Carrying my geoduck to the car around 3:30pm, I got a text from Cedric, asking me if I'd be home soon. That should have been suspicious seeing as he tends to be superglued to his office desk till 6pm most nights. But I think I was caught up in my geoduck chowder fantasy because I just said, "leaving now" and placed my surprisingly heavy sack onto the floorboard of my car. Anyways, once I got home and saw our cat Doug in his little tie I broke into involuntary cooing. Wondering why Cedric had decided to swag out the cats, I walked the hall to the bedroom, expecting to see him working after work (he works a lot). Instead, he was on one knee in a full suit as I stood there in my muddy attire, clutching my dripping trash bag full of geoduck. Stunned is the only word to describe my state. Obviously, I said yes because I'm writing this for a wedding website.